


Barrow

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Denmark Street musings [11]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Friendship, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 08:42:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18246356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: For hobbeshalftail3469, who wanted to know what happened the night they slept in the Land Rover in Career of Evil (TV).





	Barrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbeshalftail3469](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbeshalftail3469/gifts).



> There are some discrepancies between the book and TV versions of the Barrow trip, so it was hard to pinpoint exactly where in the story this sits. Please consider it to exist in some vague mash-up of the two.

Robin swung the Land Rover smoothly onto Stanley Road and drove down it. There were no spaces. She executed a neat three-point turn at the end and drove back up.

“Keep going,” Strike urged. “If anyone’s watching, they’ll just think we took a wrong turn.”

“I thought you wanted to stake Brockbank’s place out?” Robin randomly turned right at the end of the street, back the way they had come.

“I do, but let’s think a minute. And get some food. We passed a chippy a quarter of a mile back.”

Always thinking of his stomach. Robin smiled to herself as they headed back towards the chip shop. She wondered if he was planning for them to stay all night in the car. There had been no mention of finding anywhere else to sleep.

She pulled up outside the grimy glass window of the chippy and switched off the engine. Strike was hunting in his wallet. He handed her a twenty-pound note. “Large fish and chips and a curry sauce for me, please,” he said. “Oh, and maybe get a couple of bottles of water. Don’t suppose they do coffee,” he added wistfully.

Robin swallowed a protest at always being the one sent to fetch food. On this occasion it might be useful, she suddenly realised. She climbed out of the Land Rover and went into the little shop.

A surly man in his 50s took her order gracelessly. A teenage girl leaned against a fridge behind him, biting at her fingernails. The owner barked orders at her and she moved listlessly to obey, dipping a piece of fish into the batter and dropping it unenthusiastically into the fat.

“Going out for a smoke,” the man announced, and disappeared through the back door. Robin and the teenage girl exchanged a brief glance.

This was her chance. “Er, have you got a toilet I can use?” Robin asked, trying to sound as northern as possible.

The girl shook her head.

“Please?” Robin said. “I’m desperate.” It might not be true yet, but if Strike was planning for them to spend hours on a stakeout... She nodded her head towards the window, where Strike could be seen leaning against the front fender of the Land Rover, smoking and scrolling through his phone. “The boyfriend wants to keep driving, we won’t be stopping for ages. All right for ’im, he can piss in a hedge.” She gave a cheeky laugh, hoping that the topic under discussion explained her blush. Why had she just referred to Strike as her boyfriend?

The girl hesitated. Robin looked at her pleadingly, and female solidarity won out. She nodded quickly and lifted the counter hatch so Robin could come through, pointing to a tiny door just through a beaded curtain that separated the public face of the chippy from its back rooms. “Quick, though, before Gary comes back.”

“Thanks.” Robin nodded and ducked into the little toilet. It was cramped and dirty, but still better than trying to find a way to pee on the street. She emptied her bladder, washed her hands, hesitated and then decided her jeans were probably cleaner than the disgusting crusty towel hooked over the pipe under the sink. She wiped her hands on herself as best she could and hurried back through to the waiting area. She was safely back on the right side of the counter before Gary returned.

Five minutes later, she and Strike and a plastic bag emitting the pleasing odours of chips and vinegar were on their way back to Stanley Road.

There was still nowhere to park. Robin pulled up on the left, on the double yellow lines at the top of the street. They could move later when a space became available. She glanced at her watch in the dim glow from a nearby street light. It was already gone ten.

Strike, busy unwrapping the first parcel, glanced across at her. “If he’s out at the pub we might spot him coming home,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll have to catch him in the morning. If he’s even here.” Finally opening the parcel and finding Robin’s fishcakes, he passed it across and turned his attention to the other.

He was planning to spend the night, then. Robin took her proffered food and a little wooden fork and tucked in. She was hungry.

They sat for some time in silence, eating. Strike had propped his curry sauce on the dashboard in front of him and was dunking his chips as he ate. He was thinking, and Robin could almost see the cogs turning. She knew she ought to be thinking too, offering her own insights, but her mind was drifting. Two nights of terrible sleep and the long drive were catching up with her. Despite her lingering fury with Matthew and her determination to cancel the wedding, she found herself longing for home, for comfort and sleep. But not for Masham, her childhood bedroom forever tainted by traumatic memories. And not for her cheating fiancé in Ealing. For what, then? Perhaps just for a time before she knew, when she and Matthew were newly engaged and happy and he was her rock, as he had always been. Or so she had thought. Where was that foundation now? An image of Matthew’s anguished face this morning, begging her not to leave, rose in her mind and tears filled her eyes.

She was being maudlin. She blinked furiously, gave herself a mental shake and took a swig of her Coke, bought in an attempt to keep awake. It had been the most caffeinated thing on offer.

Strike sighed. “I can’t decide if I hope Brockbank is here or not,” he said. “It seems likely, if this is where his pension goes. And that might rule him out as a suspect, although he could have travelled down to London...” He trailed off, thinking again, and picked up the curry sauce pot to scrape the remaining drops of sauce out with his last few chips, licking his fingers for good measure. Amused, Robin offered him the last of her chips. The portions were large and she was full.

“No thanks, I’m on a diet,” he said, grinning, and Robin laughed even as part of her wondered if he was trying to cheer her up.

“You said you weren’t,” she reminded him, grinning back.

“Yeah, but that was a lot of pasties, biscuits and chips ago,” he said. “I guess the chippy didn’t do coffee?”

Robin shook her head and Strike sighed, resigned. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked, winding the window down.

Robin cast him a sideways glance. “You’ve been smoking in here all day,” she said.

“Yeah, but we were moving then. Smoke lingers more when you’re parked.”

For some reason, a line from the film Back To The Future drifted into Robin’s mind, a 1950s American reference to parking with a boy and what that meant. Her brother Martin had loved the film when he was young, despite not having been born when it was released. He had spent hours trying to learn to skateboard, not very successfully on rough local roads. Robin suddenly realised she and Strike were going to be spending the night together in the Land Rover, which despite being roomy felt quite small for that purpose, and she felt her cheeks grow hot. She was thankful that Strike turned away from her to open the door and climb out onto the pavement. He lit a cigarette and stood, smoking and thinking, idly surveying the street.

Robin pulled her phone from her pocket. No more texts from Matthew. She wondered if he was thinking about where she was. She wondered if he really thought her capable of sleeping with her boss as some kind of revenge move.

Strike leaned in at the window, and Robin jumped a little and slid her phone back into her pocket. “Just popping round the corner,” he said, jerking his head over his shoulder.

Robin opened her mouth to ask why, but his slightly self-conscious air stopped her. She felt her cheeks flushing again and nodded tightly. “Sure,” she said, thankful that she’d had the foresight to avail herself of the toilet at the chippy. Some things were just easier for men. He was gone in a moment, and she found herself on high alert suddenly, looking around, watching in all the mirrors and hoping he hadn’t gone far. It was dark and the street was creepy.

She was just jumpy because of the circumstances, she told herself. She might actually be within a few hundred yards of the man who sent her the leg. That thought hadn’t really occurred to her before. She wondered where her rape alarm was. It was in her hold-all somewhere. She should move it to her handbag.

Strike was soon back, opening the door and swinging himself into the seat. He glanced at her and paused. “Er, do you need to...? I mean, I could keep watch. Facing the other way,” he added hastily.

Robin blushed again. “No, I went at the chippy,” she said. “I’m good.”

He laughed, relieved, and nodded. “Good forward thinking,” he said, grinning. “So, we have a long night ahead of us.”

Robin nodded uncertainly, wondering what the plan was.

“I don’t think we need to be awake all night,” Strike went on. “Maybe till like one or so, after the pubs kick out and all the kebab shops and stuff close. I can’t imagine him coming back later than that. But you go ahead and sleep if you want to, you’ve been driving all day.” Privately he thought that she looked like she needed the sleep. Her pallor had returned with the darkness. He suspected things with Matthew were worse than she was admitting to. He also suspected she was more torn over ending the engagement than she was admitting to, probably even to herself. He well remembered the self-loathing he’d felt when he’d agreed to resume his relationship with Charlotte after she’d first slept with someone else while he was out of the country. He wondered if Matthew’s repentance had rung as hollow as Charlotte’s had. He had taken her back anyway.

Robin nodded, sleepy now. “I might climb into the back and stretch out a bit,” she said. She moved her can of Coke and handbag over into the rear bench seat, and scrambled over after them, agile. Strike leaned out of the way and kept his eyes firmly on the car in front of them and not the curve of her denim-clad backside as it swung past him. He was glad she’d stopped dieting, a thought he crushed as soon as it entered his mind. She was a colleague, and not to be the subject of such musings.

Robin wriggled out of her coat, opened her hold-all and pulled out a jumper. She dragged it on over the one she was already wearing and put her coat back on. Wrapping herself up as best she could, she leaned on the side of the vehicle behind the driver’s door, her legs stretched out on the seat in front of her. She kicked off her trainers and they fell to the floor in the boot with a thud.

The street remained deserted. Strike lit another cigarette and held it out of the window between drags, blowing the smoke out into the quiet night. Robin sipped her Coke. Two bottles of water lay on the dashboard, and she supposed she ought to take it slowly on the fluid consumption, or she would indeed end up having to pee somewhere while Strike stood guard. He was hardly going to let her wander down a dark alley alone under current circumstances. The very thought of it made her put the can down again.

“Have you ever done anything illegal?” she suddenly asked.

Strike looked at her sideways. “Odd question. Why do you ask?”

Robin wasn’t sure where that had come from, only that they needed to make conversation and it was something she had reflected on before, the apparent dichotomy between Strike’s unconventional upbringing and his chosen career. She shrugged. “Well, you know. Military police and all that. But everyone’s done something illegal, haven’t they?”

Strike grinned. “Probably,” he said. “I’ve, er, helped Shanker with a few things that probably weren’t very legal. Does it count if I didn’t always know exactly what was going on? You’ve seen him, skinny little runt that he is. He found it...useful to have me in the background sometimes.”

Robin laughed. She didn’t doubt it. Younger and fitter, but still six foot three and broad, with a face that had clearly spent time in a boxing ring, Strike would have intimidated most people. He still did.

Not her, though. Robin had three brothers, and she knew and understood male body language. Despite his size and intimidating presence, there was an inherent restraint in Strike. He didn’t frighten her at all. She couldn’t imagine him using his bulk to intimidate a woman. Despite the variety of females he was able to attract, she’d never heard him speak disrespectfully about a woman. Even his evident irritation with his sister showed only a wish to avoid rather than denigrate.

“What about you?” he asked, and Robin grinned.

“I took some sweets from the corner shop when I was four, but I don’t think that counts,” she said. “I didn’t realise you had to pay. I asked Mum and she said no, so I just popped them in my pocket when she wasn’t looking. It was years later when I looked back that I realised that was theft.”

Strike laughed. “Ignorance is no defence of the law, Robin, as well you know,” he said sternly, and she giggled. She liked this, this camaraderie between them. Matthew had been vaguely disapproving when she’d first told him that story, as though it were somehow shameful. She was only just beginning to realise, in Strike’s utterly non-judgmental company (and perhaps in her current freedom from her fiancé) how many little things in her life she carefully spun and weaved in such a way as to make them acceptable to Matthew.

“I nearly stole a book when I was a teenager,” she said, suddenly. She’d never told anyone this story, and wondered why she was telling it now. “But it was a library book, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Strike looked at her, curious to know what book had so captured a teenage Robin. “What book?”

Robin looked wistful, remembering. “It was called Horse of Air, by a Welsh author called Lucy Rees,” she said. “It was about a girl from Derbyshire who has to move south when her mum and stepdad break up. She misses her family and her step-brothers and sisters, and is so out of place in a small seaside town when she grew up high on the moors surrounded by horses. She’s depressed, I guess, and then she meets this horse and they go on a journey and it cures her. It’s got these amazing descriptions of what it’s like to feel out of step with your surroundings, and there’s a bit about being assaulted...” She trailed off, and was quiet for a long minute. Strike realised he was almost holding his breath, not wanting to break her train of thought.

“I went back to borrow it again, after... After,” Robin went on quietly. “And they didn’t have it any more. I’d love to read it again, but it’s been out of print for years.”

“You tried Amazon? eBay?”

Robin nodded. “A bit, yonks ago,” she said. She gave a light laugh. “I’ve not thought about it for ages. Don’t know where that memory came from all of a sudden.” She ducked her head, embarrassed, and reached down to the floor to pick up her Coke.

“So anyway, no,” she said. “Just a stolen packet of sweets when I was little, and a half-hearted turn on a bong at uni. That’s the sum total of my criminal record.”

Strike laughed. “I can probably stretch a bit further than that, but not much,” he said. “Nick and I pinched a packet of fags from a cigarette machine in a pub once. We worked out how to wrap paper round a two-pence coin to fool the machine that it was a 50p, so we got a pack for like 8p. But we jammed the machine and nearly got caught. Managed to make our contraband last all evening, though.” He laughed again, remembering. “And like I say, a few things for Shanker that I’d have been hard pushed to prove I was oblivious to. But mostly just roughing people up in his line of business. I’ve never actually properly hurt someone outside of a boxing ring or the Army. Unless you count Noel Brockbank.”

The return to the subject of their stakeout darkened his mood a little and he lit another cigarette, scowling. There was a long pause, both lost in thought. Robin reflected how nice it was to be able to sit and have an easy conversation with a man who wasn’t Matthew or one of her brothers. It was perfectly possible for a man and a woman to be friends, she mused. And finally here was someone who knew what had happened to her and didn’t appear to either pity her or try to tell her what she should do or feel. He had listened and then carried on treating her exactly as he had done before. Perhaps losing his leg had given him that insight, she thought. He understood what it was to have something life-changing happen to you, how it felt to have who you were taken from you and to have to fight to get it back. And how exhausting it was to always have to deal with other people’s reactions to your own experience. His quiet acceptance had been a gift she hadn’t realised she needed.

Strike sat up sharply as two people came round the corner and walked down the street. He watched closely, and Robin waited, her heart hammering. She couldn’t see, and didn’t want to attract attention by leaning to look.

After a minute, Strike sighed and sat back, shaking his head. “Wrong house,” he said succinctly. He looked at his watch.

“It’s midnight,” he said. “You should get some rest.”

Robin nodded. She drew her coat around her again and settled on the bench, but she couldn’t get comfortable. The seat cover at this end was slightly torn and wrinkled, making a lump under her head. She sat up and switched around so her head was at the other end, below Strike’s. He had swung himself around to rest his head on the side of the vehicle too, and smiled down at her. “You sleep,” he said. “I’ll watch for another hour or so then probably get some kip too.”

Robin smiled back sleepily, and Strike turned his gaze away, carefully not looking at a more vulnerable version of Robin than he’d ever seen, a Robin who represented even more of a threat to his peace of mind. Especially now the engagement ring was gone. He gazed though the windscreen at the Brockbank house and forced his mind back to the case.

Robin lay drifting, her mind slowly freeing itself from the day. She was exhausted. For some reason, she found herself remembering Strike’s comment this morning. “Of course” Matthew wanted her back. What had he meant? Just that of course Matthew wouldn’t want to lose his fiancée? Or had there been some implication that Robin was, indeed, a desirable woman?

Nonsense. She’d briefly met Charlotte, and Elin. She’d seen pictures of Ciara Porter, for goodness’ sake. Strike was attracted to supermodels and other strikingly beautiful and usually skinny women, not slightly-too-curvy girls from Yorkshire. He just meant Matthew was regretting his poor decisions catching up with him.

Thoughts of Elin led her to remember Strike’s other ambiguous utterance, about Elin forgiving him, and the image that had entered her head of them in bed. Gazing up at his profile, she suddenly found herself wondering what it was like to kiss him. Elin’s alabaster skin looked like porcelain, so delicate. Would Strike’s perpetual stubble feel scratchy against her? Would those big hands be soft and skillful—

Stop it! Her sleepy mind was drifting in utterly unacceptable directions. This man was her boss, her colleague, her partner and, she hoped, her friend.

She shifted again, trying get comfortable, and closed her eyes. Exhaustion soon dragged her down into sleep.

A soft snore drew Strike’s gaze back to her. He watched her in the dim light for a minute. Her face was half in shadow. Even in sleep she looked tired, but determined.

He sighed a little and reached for his cigarettes. He lit another and dangled his arm out of the open window, pulling his coat a little tighter around himself. He glanced down at sleeping Robin again, her lips parted, her snores soft. Their relationship had shifted abruptly in the last few days, though he could sense her resistance to him knowing what she’d told him. Her desperate attempts to work harder, be more professional, betrayed her fear that he’d see her differently. Strike knew that feeling only too well. He knew what it was like to see pity in the eyes of others, to be viewed as a broken thing. Robin’s only difference was that her wound was invisible to the outside eye unless she chose to reveal it. Which she had, to him, with the help of several glasses of cheap wine.

He tried to tell himself it made no difference to how he saw her, but it did, just not in the way that Robin feared. She had abruptly shifted in Strike’s eyes from a younger person from outside the city with a safe, secure upbringing that didn’t offer her the same insights into life that his much rougher childhood had, to a fighter with a degree of tenacity and determination that he had only scratched the surface of. He’d long recognised her skill and aptitude for the job, but he hadn’t appreciated her inner resolve before.

If he was honest with himself, her allegiance to Matthew had diminished her a little in his eyes before. Strike did not have a high opinion of Robin’s erstwhile (for the time being) fiancé. But he understood better now how someone so apparently independent and determined had clung for so long to the familiar in this one area of her life. He wondered if she ever gave thought to other men, or if Matthew, being the one from _before_ , was all she could imagine now.

There was still time, he had thought once, without allowing himself to think what for. But somehow he still couldn’t bring himself to believe that this was the final split for Robin and Matthew. He sensed that what held Robin to her fiancé was stronger than what was driving them apart. And even if the split was permanent...

What? he demanded of himself, angrily flicking his cigarette end into the gutter by the front wheel of the Land Rover. This was the best working relationship he had ever had. The business had gone from almost bankrupt to, if not thriving, then at least vaguely solvent and with a future since Robin had arrived. He had worked too hard and for too long, given up everything, to make a success of it. He wasn’t going to jeopardise that for anything.

But there was no getting away from the fact that things were becoming complicated, if only in his own heart.

Strike sighed and looked at his watch again. It was a quarter to one. Nothing else was going to happen tonight. Brockbank might not even be here. One more cigarette, and he’d get his head down and try to get a few hours’ sleep too.


End file.
